Memo Reveals Wider Abuse Of Detainees

A Newly Released Document Indicates The Events At Abu Ghraib Were Not Unique.

December 8, 2004|By Drew Brown Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- More than two months after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq shocked the world, an official memo described how military intelligence officers witnessed further prisoner abuse in Baghdad but were threatened to prevent them from reporting it.

The memo was the most recent in a collection of government documents released Tuesday. It was dated June 25 and written by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, who directs the Defense Intelligence Agency. Jacoby described how two DIA officers, assigned as interrogators to a special-operations unit designated as Task Force 6-26, witnessed evidence of prisoner abuse while working at an unnamed "temporary detention facility" in Baghdad.

The extensive collection of government documents suggests that abuse of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere was more widespread and systematic than senior officials have admitted publicly. The officials repeatedly have tried to characterize abuse last year at Abu Ghraib as an isolated series of incidents. A small number of low-ranking soldiers already have been prosecuted or are awaiting trial in those cases.

The documents released Tuesday, however, reveal that senior U.S. officials, who claimed they were unaware of the abuse, were repeatedly informed of accusations of abuse through official channels. They also suggest that these and other reports of abuse failed to trigger investigations into what increasingly appears to have been a widespread pattern of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq and at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

According to Jacoby's memo, some prisoners arriving at the facility for interrogation had "burn marks on their backs," while others had bruises and some complained of kidney pain.

One of the officers also saw a Task Force 6-26 soldier "punch a prisoner in the face to the point that he needed medical attention." The DIA interrogator was then ordered to leave the room. One of the DIA officers, who took pictures of the injuries, showed them to his Task Force 6-26 supervisor, "who immediately confiscated them."

The DIA officers were later "threatened," had their vehicle keys confiscated and were ordered not to leave the compound, "even to get a haircut at the PX [post-exchange]," Jacoby's memo read. The officers were told that their e-mails were being screened and were ordered "not to talk to anyone in the U.S." about the incidents, the memo read.

The memo doesn't specify when the incidents took place, but it suggests that they occurred shortly before the memo was written. The DIA officers reported the incidents through their chain of command June 24. Jacoby wrote the memo June 25.